upon principles of scientific inquiry in education. Important work has been done in
this area by Shavelson and Towne ( 2002 ,51–52). They agree that while“there is no
universally accepted description of the elements of scientific inquiry,”a way to
proceed was to describe the scientific process in terms of six interrelated, but not
necessarily ordered principles of inquiry:
- Pose significant questions that can be investigated empirically.
- Link research to relevant theory.
- Use methods that permit direct investigation of the question.
- Provide a coherent and explicit chain of reasoning.
- Replicate and generalize across studies.
- Disclose research to encourage professional scrutiny and critique.
In addition to the preceding principles, I suggested three more (Tatto 2001 ). The
process should be aimed at the following: - Reflection^11
- Capacity building
- Policy building
These ideas have proven indispensable in my comparative education research
and have guided the next stage of my work.
42.4 Designing and Implementing a Comparative Study
of Teacher Education
International teacher education researchers have conducted a variety of case studies
and descriptive studies focused on answering questions concerningwhatcharac-
terizes teacher education andhowit is implemented (e.g., Craig et al. 1998 ).
However, in 2000 there was scarce evidence based on empirical studies using
representative samples to document the influence of teacher education and devel-
opment on teacher learning, teaching practice, and pupil learning.
(^11) The idea that the recipients of the policy should be active subjects (not the objects) in the
research enterprise has guided my work since I began doing it in Mexico in 1978. These ideas
further evolved as a result of my work with Carol Weiss and Noel McGinn and expressed in a
paper that McGinn and I wrote early on in my doctoral program (McGinn and Tatto 1984 ).
42 The Role of Comparative and International Research... 627